'ethical mark fatigue': eth·i·cal mark fa·tigue [eth-i-kuhl mahrk fuh-teeg]
1. The confusion and inertia experienced by mainstream, 'light green' consumers, resulting from overexposure to ethical certification marks, including Fair Trade, Soil Association, Forest Stewardship Council, Rainforest Alliance, Utz Kapeh, Against Animal Testing, Rugmark, etc.
In my line of work, if you want to talk about ethical consumerism, you have to get your head around three completely different camps: those making ethically certified products, many of whom are passionate about taking an 'ethical first' approach; those retailers wanting to incorporate these ethically marked products into their offering, for a variety of reasons; and the mainstream consumers who are getting exhausted and paralysed about the 'ethical mark' glut staring out at them from their grocers' shelves.
It's this latter group that I think is experiencing 'ethical mark fatigue' - friends ask me, since I am 'social', which is better - buying Fairtrade to support producers in the South, or buying local to minimise carbon miles? When faced with Fairtrade OR Organic, which is 'better'? How about Fairtrade vs. ethical packaging? It's exhausting - I just tell people to do their best, do their homework, do what makes sense to them, and try to achieve a balance - but I have no idea if that's the right advice.
It's an interesting trend that will affect those two other groups I mentioned - the ethical brands themselves, and the retailers who carry them (or, increasingly the UK, develop in-house ethical products, like Tesco's own Fairtrade stuff). And more and more, from the retailer end, I am observing a macro approach that is moving the emphasis away from the particular benefits of each specific ethical mark, and moving it toward a holistic ethical shopping experience. Of course Whole Foods figured this out ages ago - you don't go to Whole Foods to buy Fairtrade or Organic or GM-Free, you go to Whole Foods to buy whatever it is Whole Foods is offering, because they are generally 'ethical'.
So take Marks & Spencer in the UK. Their 'Plan A' (tagline: 'Because there is no Plan B') commits them across a range of metrics: climate change, waste, sustainable raw materials, fair partnerships, and health. Whole Foods aside, in the mainstream this looks to me like a new proposition. M&S is telling us, 'Stop fretting about This vs. That. Shop here, and we'll do the heavy lifting to make sure that being an M&S consumer means being an ethical consumer.'
This has a few implications worth considering. On the positive side, M&S are experts in their own supply chains, which are far-reaching. Add that to their sheer size and the potential for scale and scope of impact is great. Another positive is that if mainstream retailers go ethical in a big way (like, if H&M were to use only ethically produced fibres across all lines, instead of having a small line of organic cotton clothes), 'ethical consumerism' will become, well, just 'consumerism'. Kind of a nice vision for the future.
And now the negatives - the biggest for me is that this trend might give consumers the day off on discerning between different versions and levels of 'ethical'. If my retailer is 'ethical', great, I can just shop there - but how ethical are they? Most clothing certainly won't come close to the high ethical calibre achieved by the likes of People Tree (www.peopletree.com). And what if internal pressures or politics cause the decision makers at this big retailer to choose one ethical path and ditch another - for example, could a food retailer, for totally non-ethical reasons, push Fairtrade and stop bothering with local food, forcing on the consumer a monopolised ethical economy?
A couple of things are clear:
1. The market for ethical marks is officially oversaturated. Please, no more.
2. That oversaturation doesn't mean we should do away with the whole system - indeed, those pioneers in ethical marking are largely what's gotten us to such widespread ethical consumer trends.
3. If retailers are going to change the game, placing ethical behaviour and monitoring in their own hands rather than those of the individual brands, we are going to have to keep them accountable. H&M and the Fairtrade Foundation are fundamentally different animals, driven by different economic goals, and it will be up to external bodies, consumers (and maybe governments?) to verify retailers' claims and keep them honest.
See you at the store...
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5 comments:
I agree that no more marks should come in and that increased regulation of/ information on the different squiggles and statements that have appeared on our cereal packets would be a good idea.
However, I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce a new, slightly different, and very audience-participatory scheme. The scheme's working title is 'unfair-trade', and I absolutely insist that its perpetrators are called 'sticker guerillas'. It will basically involve people (the sticker guerillas) quietly and moderately and really quite englishly invading supermarkets armed only wiht a bunch of stickers (perhaps enscribed with a 'sticker guerillas' web address) and their wits. Their mission is to stick these little marks of extremely low opinion onto a certain number (perhaps three) of products they consider to be the least 'social' (for example things packaged inside a bag inside a plastic crate inside a packet), and then run/walk/stroll for it. I realise that this would face the same 'what is social' problems as the fairtrade mark AND reinforce the stereotype environmentalists as weirdos, but it would be fun and slightly meaner than the worthy old fairtrade mark. Anyone up for it?
I agree with you about the ethical fatique. But I also believe that any fair trade is good fair trade and that because of the very strict (and in some ways idealistic) confines of FLO, fair trade is limited to consumers in a higher income bracket.
This is why manufacturers and retails are creating different marks.
If there were a fair trade rating system backed by a central website that explained the exact fair trade status of each company/product, in my opinion, that would be the solution. As it stands now, only radicalized fair trade is considered fair trade by FLO and the US market (at least) isn't ready to pay triple for a t-shirt. That's left only to people with means. Fair Trade is more popular in the UK. In the US, everyone is afraid of getting involved, because the FLO guidelines are so strict. There isn't much room for growing with the consumer. Here, companies are flocking to organic because it's easier to certify and explain.
I wish there was a central certification system that gave fair trade *ratings*, rather than simply a stamp. Behind the rating would be an online report showing exactly how the product was fairtrade.
We're starting a U.S. fair trade t-shirt line so I'm in the throws of this frustration (http://www.livingwageclothing.com) Sometimes I wish we just lived in the UK.
P.S. I'm referring people to your site from my myspace blog. This is a really interesting post. myspace.com/livingwageclothing
Jackson,
Interesting post. i TIME magazine in the US just ran an article on the debate between organic vs. local foods. In the end, the writer decided that local was better (for a myriad of reasons).
Secondly, I highly agree with your exhaustion of "green washing". However, as someone working for a "sustainable" company, I think there is a lot more to "ethical" products than just the sourcing, supply chain, or any other single metric used to define a product as "fair trade". A truly sustainable product or company needs to wholistically work on all the environmental and humanitarian issues pertaining to the business.
If consumers are intersted there are tools to check the actual status of products. In cotton, for example, we use Historic Futures to track each bale of cotton in order to ensure it is organically grown.
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